SoberRecovery : Alcoholism Drug Addiction Help and Information - View Single Post - Alcoholism is a tragic three act play in which there are at least 4 characters #1

nytepassion · 08-23-2005, 01:10 PM

Alcoholism is a tragic three act play in which there are at least 4 characters: the drinker and his family; friends; co-workers and even counselors may have a part in keeping the Merry-Go-Round turning. Alcoholism rarely appears in one person set apart from others; it seldom continues in isolation from others.

One person drinks too much and gets drunk and others react to his drinking and its consequences. The drinker responds to this reaction and drinks again. This sets up a Merry-Go-Round of blame and denial, a downward-spiral which characterizes alcoholism. Therefore, to understand alcoholism, we must look not at the alcoholic alone but view the illness as if we were sitting in the audience watching a play and observing carefully the roles of all the actors in the drama.

As the play opens we see the alcoholic as the star of the first act. He does all the acting; others react to what he does. A male between the ages of 30 and 55, he is usually smart, skillful, and often successful in his work; but his goal may be far above his ability. We see that his is sensitive, lonely and tense. He is also immature in a way that produces a real dependence. However, he may act as in an independent way in order to deny this fact. He also denies he is responsible for the results of his behavior. From this dependency and denial comes the name of the play -- A Merry-Go-Round Named Denial. For his to act in this way, others must make it possible. That is why we must observe carefully what each actor does in the play.

The alcoholic has learned that the use of alcohol makes him feel better. To him it is a blessing, not a curse, his medicaiton, not a poison. For a few hours it floats away his troubles; it melts away his fears, reduces his tension, removes his loneliness and solves all his problems.

The play opens with the alcoholic stating that no one can tell him what to do; he tells them. This makes it very difficult for the family to talk about drinking and its results. Even when the drinking is obviously causing serious problems, he simply will not discuss them. Talking is like a one-way street. No one seems to hear what the others are saying. One both sides, people say one thing yet do another. This is why it is necessary to see the lay to understand alcoholism. To observe the alcoholic alone, to read a scientific description of the illness, or to listen to the family's tales of woe, is only a small part of the drama. The key word in alcoholism is "Denial", for again and again people do what they say they will not or deny what they have done. If we could watch the play on TV and turn off the sound, we would understand much better what was really happening.

Early in the first act the alcoholic needs a drink, so he takes one. He drinks hard and fast, not slow and easy. He may drink openly; but more likely he will conceal the amount he drinks by drinking off-stage and not in the presence of other actors in the play. This is the first part of denial: hiding the amounts he drinks. But it proves to us that he knows he is drinking too much. He drinks more than others, more often than others and, above all, it means far more to him than to others.

Drinking too much, too often, is not a matter of choice. It is the first sign of alcoholism. Repeated denial, by hiding the bottle and drinking alone, reveals how important alcohol has become in helping the alcoholic feel better. After one or two drinks he cannot stop.

After a few more we see a profound change in the alcoholic. He reveals a sense of success, well-being and self-sufficiency. He's on top of the world, and may act as if he were a little god. Now he's right and everybody else is wrong. This is very likely to happen if someone objects to his drinking.

There is no one way all alcoholics act while intoxicated; but they are not rational or sensible; they are not responsible. They are apt to ignore the rules of social conduct, sometimes even to a criminal degree, of which driving under the influence is a clear example. If a sober person acted this way, we would consider him insane.

If drinking continues long enough, the alcoholic creates a crisis, gets into trouble, ends up in a mess. This can happen in many ways, but the pattern is always the same: he is dependent who behaves as if her were independent, and drinking makes it easy to convince itself this is true. Yet the results of his drinking make him even more dependent upon others. When his self-created crisis strikes, he waits for something to happen, ignores it, walks away from it, or cries for someone to get him out of it. Alcohol, which at first gave him a sense of success and independence, has not stripped him of his mask and reveals him a helpless, dependent child.

Act II

In Act II the alcoholic does nothing but wait for and expect others to do for him. Three others in the play act out their roles and the alcoholic benefits from what they do. He does little or nothing; everything is done for him in the second act.

THE ENABLER

The first person to appear is one we might call the Enabler, a "helpful" Mr. Clearn who may be impelled, by his own anxiety and guilt, to rescue his friend, the alcoholic, from his predicament. He wants to save the alcoholic fromt he immediate crisis and relieve him of the unbearable tension created by the situation. In reality, this person may be meeting a need of his own, rather than that of the alcoholic, although he does not realize this himself. The Enabler may be a male outside of the family, perhaps a relative; occasionally a woman plays this role.

It is also played by the so-called "helping professions" - clergyman, doctors, lawyers, social workers. Many have had little, if any, of the scientific instruction on alcohol and alcoholism, which is essential in such specialized conseling. Lacking this knowledge, they handle the situation in the same manner as the non-professional enabler. This denies the alcoholic the process of learning by "correcting his own mistakes", and conditions him to believe there will always be a protector who will come to his rescue, even though the Enablers insist they will never again rescue him. They always have and the alcoholic believes they always will. Such rescue operations can be just as compulsive as drinking.

The VICTIM

The next character to come on stage may be called the Victim. This may be the boss, the employer, the foreman or supervisor, the commanding officer in military life, a business partner, or, at times, a fellow employee. The Victim is the person who is responsible for getting the word done, if the alcoholic is absent due to a hangover. Statistics in industry show that by the time drinking interferes with a man's job, he may have been working for the same company for 10 - 15 years, and his boss has become a very real friend. Protection of the man is a perfectly normal response; there is always the hope that this will be the last time. The alcoholic has become completely dependent on this repeated protection and cover-up by the Victim; otherwise he could not continue drinking in this fashion. He would be compelled to give up drinking or give up the job. It is the Victim who enables the alcoholic to continue his irresponsible drinking without losing his job.

The PROVOKER

The third character in this act is the key person in the play, the spouse or parent of the alcoholic, the person with whom the alcoholic lives. This is usually the wife or mother. She is a veteran at this role and has played it much longer than others in the act. She is the Provoker. She is hurt and upset by repeated drinking episodes, but she holds the family together despite all the trouble caused by drinking. In turn, she feeds back into the marriage her bitterness, resentment, fear and hurt, and so becomes the source of provocation. She controls, she tries to force the changes she wants, never gives in, but never forgets. The attitude of the alcoholic is that his failure should be acceptable, but she must never fail him! He acts with complete independence and insists he will do as he pleases, and he expects her to do exactly what he tells her to do or not to do. She must be at home when he arrives, if he arrives.

This character might also be called the Adjuster; she is constantly adjusting to the crises and trouble caused by drinking. The alcoholic blames her for everything that goes wrong with the home and the marriage. She tries everything possilbe to make her marriage work to prove he is wrong. She is wife and housekeeper and may, in addition, feel compelled to earn part of the bread. Living with a man who illness is alcoholism, she attempts to be nurse, doctor, and counselor. She cannot play play these three roles without hurting herself and her husband without adding more guilt, bitterness, resentment or hostility to the situation which is already almost unbearable. Yet the customs of our society train and condition the wife to play this role. If she does not, she finds herself going against what family and society regard as the wife's role. No matter what the alcoholic does, he ends up "at home"; this is where everyone goes when there is no other place to go.

Act two is now played out in full. The alcoholic in his helpless condition has been rescued, put back on the job, and restored as a member of the family. This clothes him in the costume of a responsible adult. As everything was done for him and not by him, his dependency is increased, and he remains a child in an adult suit. The results, effects and problems have been removed by others. They have cleaned up the entire mess made by the alcoholic. The painful results of the drinking were suffered by persons other than the drinker. This permits him to continue drinking as a way to solve his problems. In Act One the alcoholic killed all his pain and woe by getting drunk; in Act Two the trouble and painful results of drinking are removed by other people. This convinces the alcoholic that he can go on behaving in this irresponsible way.

ACT III

Act III begins in much the same manner as Act One, but something has been added by the first and second acts. The need to deny his dependence is now greater and must be expressed almost at once, and even more emphatically. The alcoholic denies he has a drinking problem, denies he is an alcoholic, denies that alcohol is causing him trouble. He refuses to acknowledge that anyone helped him - more denial. He denies he may lose his job and insists that he is the best or more skilled person at his job. Above all, he denies he has caused his family any trouble. In fact he blames his family, especially his wife, for all the fuss, nagging and problems. He may even insist that his wife is crazy, that she needs to see a psychiatrist. As the illness and conflice get worse, the husband often accuses his wife of being unfaithful, having affairs with other men, although his has no reason for these accusations.

Some alcholics achieve the same denial by a stony silence, refusing to discuss anything related to their drinking. Others permit the family to discuss what they did wrong and what they failed to do, whether drunk or sober. The wife never forgets what her husband does. The husband may not remember what he did while intoxicated but he never forgets what his wife tells him he did or failed to do.

The real problem is that the alcoholic is well aware of the truth which he so strongly denies. He is aware of the drunkenness. He is aware of his failure. His guilt and remorse have become unbearable; he cannot tolerate criticism or advice from others. Above all, the memory of his utter helplessness and failure at the end of the first act is more than embarassing; it is far too painful for a person who thinks and acts as if he were a little god in his own world.

In time the family adjusts to their way of living together. The alcoholic may deny he will drink again and others in the play may vow never again to help him. The Enabler says he will never again come to his rescue. The Victim will not allow another job failure due to drinking. The Provoker, whether wife or mother, tells the alcoholic they cannon live together under these conditions.

What is said is completely different from what everyone has done and will do again. The Enabler, the Victim and the Provoker have said this before but did not carry it out. The result is that the alcoholic's sense of guilt and failure is increased; his god-like assurance that he can always do as he pleases, is challenged - and all this adds to his heavy burden of tension and loneliness. If this mental pain is made unbearable, especially by the changed attitudes and actions of the other members of the cast, there can be only one sure way for him to remove his pain, overcome his guilt and sense of failure, and recover a sense of worth and value. However if Act Two is played out as described, it is inescapable that in Act Three the alcoholic will drink again. This is his one sure means of relieving all pain, solving all problems and achieving a sense of being all right. The memory of the immediate comfort and benefits of drinking blot out the knowledge of what will happen if he drinks. Also, always in the back of his mind is the hope that this time he can control it and get the great benefits he once did from drinking. So, what seems absolutely necessary to the alcoholic occurs - he begins to drink again.

continued below - Read on ....

08-23-2005, 01:10 PM	#1 (permalink)
nytepassion Drug Addiction Has No Mercy Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Milwaukie Oregon Posts: 677	Alcoholism is a tragic three act play in which there are at least 4 characters #1 Alcoholism is a tragic three act play in which there are at least 4 characters: the drinker and his family; friends; co-workers and even counselors may have a part in keeping the Merry-Go-Round turning. Alcoholism rarely appears in one person set apart from others; it seldom continues in isolation from others. One person drinks too much and gets drunk and others react to his drinking and its consequences. The drinker responds to this reaction and drinks again. This sets up a Merry-Go-Round of blame and denial, a downward-spiral which characterizes alcoholism. Therefore, to understand alcoholism, we must look not at the alcoholic alone but view the illness as if we were sitting in the audience watching a play and observing carefully the roles of all the actors in the drama. As the play opens we see the alcoholic as the star of the first act. He does all the acting; others react to what he does. A male between the ages of 30 and 55, he is usually smart, skillful, and often successful in his work; but his goal may be far above his ability. We see that his is sensitive, lonely and tense. He is also immature in a way that produces a real dependence. However, he may act as in an independent way in order to deny this fact. He also denies he is responsible for the results of his behavior. From this dependency and denial comes the name of the play -- A Merry-Go-Round Named Denial. For his to act in this way, others must make it possible. That is why we must observe carefully what each actor does in the play. The alcoholic has learned that the use of alcohol makes him feel better. To him it is a blessing, not a curse, his medicaiton, not a poison. For a few hours it floats away his troubles; it melts away his fears, reduces his tension, removes his loneliness and solves all his problems. The play opens with the alcoholic stating that no one can tell him what to do; he tells them. This makes it very difficult for the family to talk about drinking and its results. Even when the drinking is obviously causing serious problems, he simply will not discuss them. Talking is like a one-way street. No one seems to hear what the others are saying. One both sides, people say one thing yet do another. This is why it is necessary to see the lay to understand alcoholism. To observe the alcoholic alone, to read a scientific description of the illness, or to listen to the family's tales of woe, is only a small part of the drama. The key word in alcoholism is "Denial", for again and again people do what they say they will not or deny what they have done. If we could watch the play on TV and turn off the sound, we would understand much better what was really happening. Early in the first act the alcoholic needs a drink, so he takes one. He drinks hard and fast, not slow and easy. He may drink openly; but more likely he will conceal the amount he drinks by drinking off-stage and not in the presence of other actors in the play. This is the first part of denial: hiding the amounts he drinks. But it proves to us that he knows he is drinking too much. He drinks more than others, more often than others and, above all, it means far more to him than to others. Drinking too much, too often, is not a matter of choice. It is the first sign of alcoholism. Repeated denial, by hiding the bottle and drinking alone, reveals how important alcohol has become in helping the alcoholic feel better. After one or two drinks he cannot stop. After a few more we see a profound change in the alcoholic. He reveals a sense of success, well-being and self-sufficiency. He's on top of the world, and may act as if he were a little god. Now he's right and everybody else is wrong. This is very likely to happen if someone objects to his drinking. There is no one way all alcoholics act while intoxicated; but they are not rational or sensible; they are not responsible. They are apt to ignore the rules of social conduct, sometimes even to a criminal degree, of which driving under the influence is a clear example. If a sober person acted this way, we would consider him insane. If drinking continues long enough, the alcoholic creates a crisis, gets into trouble, ends up in a mess. This can happen in many ways, but the pattern is always the same: he is dependent who behaves as if her were independent, and drinking makes it easy to convince itself this is true. Yet the results of his drinking make him even more dependent upon others. When his self-created crisis strikes, he waits for something to happen, ignores it, walks away from it, or cries for someone to get him out of it. Alcohol, which at first gave him a sense of success and independence, has not stripped him of his mask and reveals him a helpless, dependent child. Act II In Act II the alcoholic does nothing but wait for and expect others to do for him. Three others in the play act out their roles and the alcoholic benefits from what they do. He does little or nothing; everything is done for him in the second act. THE ENABLER The first person to appear is one we might call the Enabler, a "helpful" Mr. Clearn who may be impelled, by his own anxiety and guilt, to rescue his friend, the alcoholic, from his predicament. He wants to save the alcoholic fromt he immediate crisis and relieve him of the unbearable tension created by the situation. In reality, this person may be meeting a need of his own, rather than that of the alcoholic, although he does not realize this himself. The Enabler may be a male outside of the family, perhaps a relative; occasionally a woman plays this role. It is also played by the so-called "helping professions" - clergyman, doctors, lawyers, social workers. Many have had little, if any, of the scientific instruction on alcohol and alcoholism, which is essential in such specialized conseling. Lacking this knowledge, they handle the situation in the same manner as the non-professional enabler. This denies the alcoholic the process of learning by "correcting his own mistakes", and conditions him to believe there will always be a protector who will come to his rescue, even though the Enablers insist they will never again rescue him. They always have and the alcoholic believes they always will. Such rescue operations can be just as compulsive as drinking. The VICTIM The next character to come on stage may be called the Victim. This may be the boss, the employer, the foreman or supervisor, the commanding officer in military life, a business partner, or, at times, a fellow employee. The Victim is the person who is responsible for getting the word done, if the alcoholic is absent due to a hangover. Statistics in industry show that by the time drinking interferes with a man's job, he may have been working for the same company for 10 - 15 years, and his boss has become a very real friend. Protection of the man is a perfectly normal response; there is always the hope that this will be the last time. The alcoholic has become completely dependent on this repeated protection and cover-up by the Victim; otherwise he could not continue drinking in this fashion. He would be compelled to give up drinking or give up the job. It is the Victim who enables the alcoholic to continue his irresponsible drinking without losing his job. The PROVOKER The third character in this act is the key person in the play, the spouse or parent of the alcoholic, the person with whom the alcoholic lives. This is usually the wife or mother. She is a veteran at this role and has played it much longer than others in the act. She is the Provoker. She is hurt and upset by repeated drinking episodes, but she holds the family together despite all the trouble caused by drinking. In turn, she feeds back into the marriage her bitterness, resentment, fear and hurt, and so becomes the source of provocation. She controls, she tries to force the changes she wants, never gives in, but never forgets. The attitude of the alcoholic is that his failure should be acceptable, but she must never fail him! He acts with complete independence and insists he will do as he pleases, and he expects her to do exactly what he tells her to do or not to do. She must be at home when he arrives, if he arrives. This character might also be called the Adjuster; she is constantly adjusting to the crises and trouble caused by drinking. The alcoholic blames her for everything that goes wrong with the home and the marriage. She tries everything possilbe to make her marriage work to prove he is wrong. She is wife and housekeeper and may, in addition, feel compelled to earn part of the bread. Living with a man who illness is alcoholism, she attempts to be nurse, doctor, and counselor. She cannot play play these three roles without hurting herself and her husband without adding more guilt, bitterness, resentment or hostility to the situation which is already almost unbearable. Yet the customs of our society train and condition the wife to play this role. If she does not, she finds herself going against what family and society regard as the wife's role. No matter what the alcoholic does, he ends up "at home"; this is where everyone goes when there is no other place to go. Act two is now played out in full. The alcoholic in his helpless condition has been rescued, put back on the job, and restored as a member of the family. This clothes him in the costume of a responsible adult. As everything was done for him and not by him, his dependency is increased, and he remains a child in an adult suit. The results, effects and problems have been removed by others. They have cleaned up the entire mess made by the alcoholic. The painful results of the drinking were suffered by persons other than the drinker. This permits him to continue drinking as a way to solve his problems. In Act One the alcoholic killed all his pain and woe by getting drunk; in Act Two the trouble and painful results of drinking are removed by other people. This convinces the alcoholic that he can go on behaving in this irresponsible way. ACT III Act III begins in much the same manner as Act One, but something has been added by the first and second acts. The need to deny his dependence is now greater and must be expressed almost at once, and even more emphatically. The alcoholic denies he has a drinking problem, denies he is an alcoholic, denies that alcohol is causing him trouble. He refuses to acknowledge that anyone helped him - more denial. He denies he may lose his job and insists that he is the best or more skilled person at his job. Above all, he denies he has caused his family any trouble. In fact he blames his family, especially his wife, for all the fuss, nagging and problems. He may even insist that his wife is crazy, that she needs to see a psychiatrist. As the illness and conflice get worse, the husband often accuses his wife of being unfaithful, having affairs with other men, although his has no reason for these accusations. Some alcholics achieve the same denial by a stony silence, refusing to discuss anything related to their drinking. Others permit the family to discuss what they did wrong and what they failed to do, whether drunk or sober. The wife never forgets what her husband does. The husband may not remember what he did while intoxicated but he never forgets what his wife tells him he did or failed to do. The real problem is that the alcoholic is well aware of the truth which he so strongly denies. He is aware of the drunkenness. He is aware of his failure. His guilt and remorse have become unbearable; he cannot tolerate criticism or advice from others. Above all, the memory of his utter helplessness and failure at the end of the first act is more than embarassing; it is far too painful for a person who thinks and acts as if he were a little god in his own world. In time the family adjusts to their way of living together. The alcoholic may deny he will drink again and others in the play may vow never again to help him. The Enabler says he will never again come to his rescue. The Victim will not allow another job failure due to drinking. The Provoker, whether wife or mother, tells the alcoholic they cannon live together under these conditions. What is said is completely different from what everyone has done and will do again. The Enabler, the Victim and the Provoker have said this before but did not carry it out. The result is that the alcoholic's sense of guilt and failure is increased; his god-like assurance that he can always do as he pleases, is challenged - and all this adds to his heavy burden of tension and loneliness. If this mental pain is made unbearable, especially by the changed attitudes and actions of the other members of the cast, there can be only one sure way for him to remove his pain, overcome his guilt and sense of failure, and recover a sense of worth and value. However if Act Two is played out as described, it is inescapable that in Act Three the alcoholic will drink again. This is his one sure means of relieving all pain, solving all problems and achieving a sense of being all right. The memory of the immediate comfort and benefits of drinking blot out the knowledge of what will happen if he drinks. Also, always in the back of his mind is the hope that this time he can control it and get the great benefits he once did from drinking. So, what seems absolutely necessary to the alcoholic occurs - he begins to drink again. *continued below - Read on ....* __________________ "What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly." ~ Richard Bach.